July 5, 2007MODders and Stylists: Unite!
Comments (7) A few days ago poyntesm posted a topic in the MOD Authors forum at phpbb.com. The topic boils down to this: how can we bring MOD authors and style creators together in an effective fasion? I think that’s an extremely interesting question, and wonder why I haven’t seen it raised before.
It doesn’t mean it hasn’t been raised before, just that I haven’t seen it. 
I haven’t posted in his topic yet, but I have been thinking about it.
As a decent (in my opinion) MOD author but a terrible graphics artist (again, my opinion 
) I can certainly related to his question. There are plenty of boards out there for phpBB code writers. I frequent a few, and there are more out there that I don’t get to on a regular basis. And there are the MOD Author forums at phpbb.com (one for 2.x and one for 3.x right now) as well. There are also plenty of boards out there for styles authors, and equivalent styles forums at phpbb.com.
Where is the common meeting ground? And who needs who more? And what about other services, like translations?
As a MOD author I tend to stay away from any MOD that requires extensive graphics work. I have created some simple graphics for my MODs, but anything that would require extending a style for an entirely new application (like the garage add-on by poyntesm) would be beyond my interest. When I start a new site, it will often take only a few hours to pull various pieces of php code together from prior sites, and then it might take months of tweaking to get the graphics and overall “theme” of the site built to fit my vision.
I even own a copy of the full Adobe suite, so it’s not a lack of tools. Giving me access to the Adobe suite is like giving a blind person the keys to your car; they’re able to use it with some instructions, but they’re not going to be very effective, and lots of nasty things will likely happen along the way.
As it turns out, over the years I have been able to swap phpBB work for some graphics work. In fact, in one case I sought out a client because she had posted some questions on phpbb.com, and she also ran a graphics design service. I swapped phpBB MOD services for graphics work, and I think we were both happy with the results. So clearly the concept works.
As it turned out, I needed far less of her work than she needed from me. I suspect that would be the normal scenario. I expect that more MOD authors need styles or graphics help than styles artists need MOD help, but I could be wrong. So from my viewpoint as a MOD author, the question would become, “How can I find a styles / graphics person that would be interested in helping me?” and secondarily, “What’s in it for them?”
Whatever solution presented is – in my opinion – likely going to be better off it is is separate from phpbb.com. The primary reason for this, as I see it, would be the need to police it fairly strictly. I would not want to join a board just to be innundated with MOD requests, there’s already a forum for that at phpbb.com. And I’m sure the same would be true for a styles artist. So there would need to be some sort of review process, I think.
To summarize my thoughts so far: I think there is a need for a place for MOD authors and styles artists to collaborate on work. I think that place would be best served if it were separate from phpbb.com. I’m going to think on it some more and see what I can come up with.
Comments or suggestions are welcomed. 
Comments (7)
Very nice blog post! I think that’s a very important point. I am not very good with styles myself, especially images. So if i could trade coding against styles, that would also be a good possibility for myself. But of course not all stylists need modding, and not all who need modding are stylists. So it would really be better to have more voluntary stylists (which there are, but not so many). At least trade is one possibility to get your images.
Comment by eviL3 — July 6, 2007 @ 2:43 am
I definitely think the concept of swapping skills is worthy of consideration, but I also realize that it won’t work in every situation. In the case that I discussed earlier I was always doing more MOD work than I received styles help.
The concept that I believe poyntesm was raising was to figure out some way to help put the two camps together. Right now at phpbb.com there is a topic for “make a graphic for me” that is fairly huge, and requests come in from all over the place. I think some sort of more formal process would be helpful. It may be that it starts out primarily as MOD authors requesting help from styles artists, but as the process becomes more mature maybe more styles artists would realize the benefits as well.
Comment by dave.rathbun — July 6, 2007 @ 8:13 am
I have posted a few comments in the topic (link in blog post) at phpbb.com. So far the response has been probably about what I expected. There are a few folks that are on board, a few folks on the fence, and probably some that don’t quite get it just yet.
Something like this will probably take a while to germinate.
I thought about going ahead and setting up the domain, but frankly I was hoping for someone with a lot of enthusiasm to volunteer to help set up the board and MOD it as needed to support this concept. At this point I don’t have time to do that until (at minimum) the end of August, and perhaps longer than that.
So I will for the moment be satisfied with the slow but steady discussion taking place at phpbb.com.
Comment by dave.rathbun — July 11, 2007 @ 6:50 am
Based on the rather underwhelming response to the topic at phpbb.com I am going to drop this idea from my list of projects. It’s not like I needed something else to occupy my time anyway.
If someone else were to start something up I would support it.
Comment by dave.rathbun — July 20, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
I think the main issue will be from the style side. I did not get one single response from them to the same topic posted in there forum…. someday I might take this project on but currently my time is too limited.
Comment by Esmond Poynton — July 25, 2007 @ 3:36 am
I agree with poyntesm, we need to get more style guys intrested.
Comment by eviL3 — July 25, 2007 @ 10:52 am
And therein lies the challenge.
I think it’s easy to see how a MOD writer can benefit from having styles assistance. I think it’s less clear how the styles artist might benefit. Unless we can come up with that, I’m not sure how far this idea will go.
Comment by dave.rathbun — July 25, 2007 @ 2:38 pm